How often are you attentive to that small still voice that seems to speak from more than just your mind, but from your heart, your soul? It guides and instructs you, sometimes you listen and sometimes you don’t. Then usually for those moments you don’t, you think, “I should’ve listened.” The Holy Spirit was given to us as a gift towards our sanctification, the process of being made holy as God is holy (Leviticus 19:2), and to being Christlike (Philippians 2:5-8) and I believe we all can do much better with remaining sensitive to it, not just for our sake, but others.

The Holy Spirit is One Spirit, each of us do not have a different version of it. The same on that is in me, is in you if you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior who died and raised three days later. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is living in us as His believers (Romans 8:11). This One Spirit makes us one body of Christ (Romans 12:4-5), one flesh and sets us apart from the world. Why is this important?

As one flesh, made of different parts but the same Spirit, we are all connected spiritually. Through the Holy Spirit we have the capacity and means to heal, exhort, and support one another, even without all the information. Furthermore, The Holy Spirit connects us to all its creation in the purest of forms. It provides us insight into another person’s spiritual woes and presenting concerns. Recently, the Holy Spirit led me into prayer. Before I went to bed, I heard it tell me, twice, “Do not fall asleep without first praying for this family,” so before I closed my eyes to sleep, I closed them and prayed for that family. I allowed myself to be led by the Holy Spirit in prayer (Ephesians 6:18) for each of its members. The next morning, I received a word that their family member passed that morning. The Holy Spirit is not ignorant of what another part of its body or its creation is going through and will therefore prompt another part into intercession. This intervention can look like prayer, a phone call, a text message, a gift, etc. How many times have you reached out to a friend, family member or co-worker with a gift or word of encouragement and their response was, “That was exactly what I needed to hear.” How many times have you been stirred within your heart to pray for someone not exactly knowing why until afterwards when you find out they have been going through hard times? The Holy Spirit makes intercession for us as we pray and through others, when we are sensitive to it. This sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, I believe, is a key means to not only being a vessel to expanding The Lord’s kingdom here on earth to non-believers, but also empowering, uplifting and building up the church here on earth.

My prayer for you is that you don’t grieve the Holy Spirit with worldly distractions, impure motives, anger, bitterness, jealousy, resentment and all things of the flesh (Ephesians 4:30) so that His voice can be clear to you. Make room within your mind and soul to hear its promptings, yielding, instruction and wooing and then obey. Lean into it. Want to remain near to the Lord? Lean into His Holy Spirit and obey its instruction, work in alignment and agreement with the Lord as He uses you through His Holy Spirit to fulfill His work here on earth. Allow yourself to stand testament to watching how Jesus manifests Himself in someone else’s life, then rejoice and be humbled in how He chose you to be the willing means to draw someone in closer to Him. We are Jesus’s light-bearers by the power of the Holy Spirit, so let us remove proceeding from our own volition, surrender to its prompting so it can pierce the darkness attempting to reign in another person’s life.

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" -Romans 8:14